What better heatsink to top
off the newly release 900Mhz Duron
than the GlobalWin WBK-38? With the WBK-38, GlobalWin have managed to produce
a Socket A heatsink with some serious attitude.

Gone are the small fan and straight lines you'd expect
from your typical little square heatsink! Instead, the WBK-38 has
a curved extrusion and a high-power 6800RPM fan to give this heatsink
everything it needs to be a top of the line cooler.

Will it work, will it beat out all of the
competition? It sure looks like it can, but as we've seen in the past,
looks don't always equal performance!

What
makes this heatsink stand out the most are the curves shown in
the extrusion. In all the heatsinks we've looked at this is the
only aluminum extrusion to have a base region of variable thickness.

In fact the region of the base which sits directly above the processors core is 5mm thicker than the rest of the base which is 8mm thick. Essentially a pyramid of base material is built up directly in the area which receives the greatest heat. The little triangle of material measures 18mm wide and 5mm high. Its purpose is no doubt to help transfer the heat from the core uniaxialy along the length of the heatsink. Oddly, the 6mm wide clip trough is cut down so far as there is only 4mm worth of base remaining. It would be interesting to see if the depth of this cut-out has any bearing on the heatsinks' ability to cool.

The fin
design follows the pattern of the base in a wave form. The fins range in base
height from 30mm to 35mm. The center section, and the outside corners have the
longest heights. Fin width also varies from about 1.0mm at the base to 0.75mm at
the top. The slight taper helps to cut down on resistance as the air from the
WBK-38's powerful fan is blown downward.

Two small slices are made through the tops of the fins on either
side for the wires which attach the fan to the unit. The fan itself is protected
by a nice shinny 50mm wire fan grill. The wire has almost no resistance
effect on the air being drawn in by the fan. Conversely, punched grills over fans
on power supplies for example significantly cut down on the amount of air being
drawn in by the fan, and cause a lot of drag. Luckily, such gills don't typically
find their way onto the fans of heatsinks.

Nice and shiny wire grill has almost no impact on the
fans air intake.

The Molex pass-thru adapter comes in handy when fan
headers on the motherboard are scarce.

The GlobalWin fan plugs directly into the motherboard, and via a
RPM monitoring cable enables the computer to monitor it for signs of trouble,
should it seize or slow down drastically. As with many motherboards today, there
either aren't enough fan headers or they are all being used. As a bonus
GlobalWin include an adapter pass-thru cable for the fan which can be plugged
directly into a standard Molex connector.